Uncle Grumpy’s back. I can’t say no to him. He bought me a Bowie knife for my twelfth birthday. I’ve owed him ever since.
Uncle Grump, the floor is yours.
What can I tell ya? The kid wanted a Bowie knife, his mother wouldn’t get him one.
Okay, here it is.
You choose one word instead of another word, it means something. What? It means you didn’t want to use the other word. Why? Because the word you chose more accurately suited your purposes.
For good. Or for evil.
Words can reveal. Words can conceal. Words can manipulate. Words can distort. People say, “It’s only words.” They’re wrong. And they’re trying to fool you. With words. While they’re trying to convince you they don’t matter.
There’s this guy named Frank Luntz, a political and corporate consultant, usually identified with conservative causes. Luntz wrote a book called Words That Work. The subtitle for that book could have read, “How To Use ‘Hot Button’ Words To Fool People Into Coming Over To Your Side.” But only if Luntz was trying to be honest, rather than trying to sell books.
In a culture with a diminishing concern for shame, there are a remarkably few unacceptable methods of making a living. Expert liars could promote their “How To Lie” books as “self help” aids, explaining, “If you’re going to lie anyway, why not learn how to be good at it?”
Luntz trains his clients to wrap their arguments in specific, focus-group-tested words and phrases, which, because of their connotations to the listeners, are helpful in gaining their support. Luntz was famous for re-branding the Inheritance Tax the “Death Tax.” People, formerly apathetic on the subject, were suddenly up in arms.
“Man! You can’t even die in this country without getting taxed!”
Luntz taught the opponents of “global warming” to defuse the concern by repackaging the issue as “Climate change.” “Climate change” doesn’t sound so earthshaking. You open a window. You put on a sweater. Good-bye, “Climate change”.
People aren’t crazy about oil drilling? Call it “Energy exploration.” Suddenly, it’s an adventure.
“Energy exploration! I want to do that!”
You’re not plundering the environment. You’re Magellan.
Here’s a popular Luntzism. At least it sounds like one. There’s a lot of talk these days about the previous administration’s behavior concerning the issue of torture. When they’re questioned about it, spokespeople for the previous administration, not one of them, but every one of them – as if they’d been carefully tutored to do so – will first make a sour face, and then they’ll say,
“I don’t think we should re-litigate the past.”
You see the word? “Re-litigate”?
This word was not casually selected. “Re-litigate” is a “lawyer word”. People don’t like lawyers. Especially when they’re litigating.
Using that word sends the message, “What they’re doing here is bad.” And it's not just litigating. It's re-litigating. They litigated already. And now, they’re litigating again! What the heck is going on!
This rampant litigating has got to stop!
Can anyone say “sideshow”? Suddenly, we’re talking about “litigating”, and nobody’s talking about torture.
Secondly, and more importantly,
Whenever someone complains, “I don’t think we should re-litigate the past”, what they’re actually saying, rather transparently, is, “Look, our side messed up in a shameful and embarrassing way in the past, and it would be a lot better for us if we didn’t talk about it anymore.”
Hence, the distracting “re-litigate.” They pooped in their pants. And they don’t want to talk about it.
Am I being unfair? I don’t know. People who won the Nobel Prize, or received an Oscar or the Congressional Medal of Honor, they seem to be to happy to talk about the past. Why is that?
Because they didn’t torture anybody.
Why does this get me so steamed up? Because a self-serving choice of words has replaced a serious discussion with a “smiley face” and a new coat of paint. After all the P.R., symbolic manipulation, the problem is still there.
And you can’t make that go “poof” with words.
Here’s what I don’t get. We know what they’re doing. They know we know.
So why do they keep doing it?